Gravel spreader

ABSTRACT

A HOPPER AND CONVEYOR UNIT ADAPTED TO RECEIVE GRAVEL OR THE LIKE FROM A HAULING TRUCK HAS AN ENDLESS CONVEYOR EXTENDING CROSSWISE OF THE ROADWAY AND EFFECTIVE TO DELIVER GRAVEL FROM THE HOPPER TO A BOX EXTENDING CROSSWISE OVER THE SHOULDER OF THE ROADWAY, THIS BOX HAVING A PERFORATED BOTTOM WITH MEANS FOR RECIPROCATING THE PERFORATED BOTTOM WHEREBY THE GRAVEL IS EVENLY SHAKEN OUT UPON THE SHOULDER, TOGETHER WITH A CONTROL GATE FOR VARY-   ING THE NUMBER OF PERFORATIONS IN THE BOTTOM FREE TO DISCHARGE GRAVEL.

P 1971 E. H. ENSINGER 3,606,964

GRAVEL- SPREADER Filed g 69 s Sheets-Sheet 1 INVENTOR EARL H. ENSINGER p 21, 1971 E. H. EN SINGER 3,606,964

- GRAVEL SPREADER Filed Aug. 28, 1969 3 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTOR EARL H. ENSINGER p 21, 71 E. H. ENSINGER 3,606,964

GRAVEL SPREADER Filed Aug. 28, 1969 3 Sheets-Sheet 5 1 INVENTOR =& 38 3| EARL H. ENSINGER EYS United States Patent 3,606,964 GRAVEL SPREADER Earl H. Ensinger, 833 E. 139th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44110 Filed Aug. 28, 1969, Ser. No. 853,789 Int. Cl. B65g 65/70 US. Cl. 222-161 6 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A hopper and conveyor unit adapted to receive gravel or the like from a hauling truck has an endless conveyor extending crosswise of the roadway and effective to deliver gravel from the hopper to a box extending crosswise over the shoulder of the roadway, this box having a perforated bottom with means for reciprocating the perforated bottom whereby the gravel is evenly shaken out upon the shoulder, together with a control gate. for varying the number of perforations in the bottom free todischarge gra'vel.

There is a need today for an apparatus which will travel down a roadway, following a tank which spreads tar or bituminous material upon a shoulder laterally outside of the roadway so as to progressively and substantially uninterruptedly, evenly deposit fine gravel, commonly known as chips, on the freshly coated shoulder. This invention provides such an apparatus which is readily attached to a towing dump truck and which provides a very simplified arrangement for evenly spreading the gravel chips at any rate desired within the capacity of the machine.

In the drawings,

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of the entire apparatus intended to be hauled behind a dump truck;

FIG. 2 is a side elevational view of the hopper and conveyor unit;

FIG. 3 is a fragmentary side elevational view taken from the left-hand side of FIG. 1; while FIG. 4 is a fragmental perspective view, enlarged, of the end of the gravel spreader device most remote from the hopper and conveyor unit with certain pants removed to more clearly understand the invention.

While other devices might be used to feed gravel chips to the improved gravel spreader of this invention, it is preferred to utilize a hopper and conveyor combination which is disclosed and described in my US. Pat. No. 2,779,508, granted Jan. 29, 1957, to which further reference may be had for details not mentioned herein. It is believed it is only necessary to understand the basic features of this hopper and conveyor unit as it forms only an indirect part of the present invention.

A wheeled chassis is adapted to travel along a roadway by wheels 11 which may be mounted if desired to be angularly movable about vertical pivots 12 so as to facilitate movement of the unit in one or more directions when it is pushed or pulled. Mounted on the chassis is a hopper 13 which has the usual inclined walls crosswise of the roadway terminating in an elongated discharge slot at the bottom of the hopper in the usual fashion. At least one side of the hopper 13 at the top is low enough to permit a rear-dump truck, when closely engaging the hopper, to discharge its load gradually into the open upper top of the hopper 13'. A sliding gate 14 is movable generally in line with one of the inclined sides of the hopper to control the width of the elongated slot in the bottom of the hopper so as to vary the amount of gravel discharged below the hopper. The position of the gate 14 may be controlled in any desired manner as by cranks 15, oscillatable by a control rod 16 and connected with the icev gate -14 by linkage 17. In one form of this apparatus, the gate 14 is controlled by hydraulic jacks.

An endless conveyor 18 (FIG. 3) is mounted in position so that its upper run will receive the gravel falling from the hopper 13. The conveyor belt passes over pulleys at opposite ends of the chassis 10, one being a drive pulley 19 at the end of the unit nearest the road shoulder and the other being a tail pulley at the opposite end, not shown. Side boards, not shown, are secured to the inner faces of the parallel members 20 which are secured to the chassis 10 in fixed position above the conveyor upper run 18 so as to hold the gravel on the conveyor in the usual fashion.

This invention adds to the above device a novel means for evenly distributing gravel chips on the shoulder of a roadway traversed by the hopper and conveyor unit. For this purpose, a box 21 is rigidly attached to the hopper and conveyor unit, as by bolts 22 secured to members 23 which in turn are rigidly secured to members 20 of the hopper and conveyor unit. Further support of a cantilever nature is provided by a pair of channels 24 bolted to members 23 at 25 at their inner ends, and bolted to vertical posts 26 at their outer ends by bolts 27. The lower ends of posts 26 are bolted at 28 to the upper edges of the box 21. This cantilever frame is further braced at 29 and 30 so that the entire weight of the gravel spreader is supported from the chassis 10. However, it should be understood, that this invention could utilize support Wheels at the laterally outermost end of the gravel spreader and still utilize the benefits of this invention.

Referring to FIGS. 1, 3 and 4, the bottom of hopper 21 is formed by a plate 31 having substantially evenly spaced through perforations 32 over substantially its entire surface except for the edges as will be later described. As seen in FIG. 4, the holes 32 are arranged in parallel lines extending longitudinally of the box 21, or crosswise of the road shoulder. To give greater holding capacity, the lower portions of the side walls of the box 21 slope inwardly and downwardly as indicated at 33. The lower edges of the walls 33 terminate over the plate 31 so that all of the material falling into the box 21 is fed to the perforated bottom 31. Preferably, rubber flashing strips 34, extending the full length of box 21 on each side thereof, are held between vertically downwardly extending flanges 33a of the portions 33 and held firmly in position by flanges 35a on the flashing covers 35 which are bolted to the side walls of the box 21 and which lie generally parallel to the inclined plates 33.

It will be understood that the bottom 31 is longer than it is wide. The longer dimension extends crosswise of the shoulder of the roadway to be coated. Means is provided supporting the bottom 31 for endwise reciprocation, that is, in the direction of its longer dimension. The longitudinal edges of the bottom plate 31 are held in a more rigid fashion by having the same sandwiched between reinforcing strips 36 which are either welded or bolted to the bottom plate 31. Rigidly extending upwardly from each of these side structures 36 are a plurality of hangers 37 along each side having perforations through which pass a fixed guide rod 38 on each side along which the hangers 37 support the bottom plate for endwise reciprocation. The rods 38 in turn are fixed in position by hangers 39 which are secured, as by welding, to the strips 40 secured along the bottom of the side walls of the box 21.

The endwise reciprocation of the box bottom may be provided in several different manners but the form shown here comprises an hydraulic motor 41 fixed to a shelf 46 which is braced by angle plates 42 welded to the outer end wall 21a of the box 21. This motor has a vertically extending rotatable shaft to the lower end of which is attached an eccenric 44 (FIG. 3), which eccentric passes through openings 43 in a clevis 44a which is pivotally connected by pin 45 with the laterally outermost end of the bottom plate 31. It results from this construction that rotation of the hydraulic motor shaft causes plate 31 to oscillate endwise, that is, crosswise of the roadway shoulder, with a stroke which is sufiicient to maintain an even distribution of the gravel chips on the bottom 31. Referring to FIG. 3, it will be obvious that gravel chips moving in the direction of the arrow on the upper run of conveyor belt 18 will be discharged with sufficient velocity to fall into the box 21 and onto the bottom 31 thereof, say, at approximately the center zone of the bottom. As the gravel chips pile up on the bottom of the box, they naturally will tend to spread out both laterally and longitudinally and this movement is aided by an oscillation of the bottom plate by eccentric 44 with a stroke of approximately inch to one inch with a frequency of about 500 to 2000 oscillations per minute. This oscillation is sufiicient to provide an even distribution of the gravel chips throughout the entire longitudinal length of the bottom plate 31 where such'total length is between four and eight feet. The holes 32 in this case were /2 inch diameter and the gravel was No. 2 chips.

Power is supplied to carry out all the necessary functions of the apparatus hereinbefore described. An internal combustion engine 50 is mounted in a rigid manner on the chassis 10, as shown, supported by plates 23 and suitable bracing members. The driven shaft 51 of this engine at one side of the machine carries a gear 52 which through a chain belt 53 drives a larger gear 54 which is secured to the end of shaft 19a so as to drive the conveyor pulley 19. At the other side of the machine, shaft 51 drives a spur gear 55 which through chain belt 56 drives a larger gear 57 which in turn drives the hydraulic pump 58 to supply hydraulic fluid for the motor 41. A flexible hose 59 connects the pump 58 with hydraulic motor 41. The discharge from this motor is through hose 60 to a sump tank 61 which in turn is connected by hose 62 back to the pump 58. A control lever 63 is provided to control this flow of hydraulic fluid. Preferably, a step 64 is provided on which an operator may stand as he rides along with the apparatus and a control handle 65 may be reached by the operator standing on step 64 and this enables him to control conveyor 18 through control mechanism not shown here, but which is described in the above mentioned Pat. 2,779,504.

Electric winches are shown at 66 in FIG. 2 for driving cable drums 67 upon which are wound cables 68 which pass through tubular members to the opposite side of the hopper-conveyor unit for the purpose of hooking this unit tightly to a dump truck to which the cables are attached as for instance by means of the hooks 27 described in the above mentioned prior patent. The control lever 69 provides means by which the hopper-conveyor unit may be attached to the hauling truck after it moves into position to dump gravel into the hopper 13. The electric winches 66 are not shown in FIG. 1 as that would only confuse the drawings.

Means is provided to control the flow of gravel chips through the perforations 3-2 in the box bottom 31. This comprises an imperforate plate 70 mounted below the bottom 31 and slidable across the shorter dimension of the bottom by reason of the fact that it rests upon ways 71 which are rigidly secured to the bottom of the box 21. Control of gate 70 may be supplied in any manner desired. I have here shown a manual control comprising a linkage 72 connected between ears 70a on the gate and cars 73 on the box 21. It will be understood that this might be done hydraulically or electrically if desired.

The operation of this invention should now be clear. The apparatus shown in FIG. 1 is placed on the roadway with the wheels 11 on the road supporting the gravel spreader device in a cantilever fashion over the shoulder at the side of the road. A dump truck loaded with gravel chips is backed up against that side of hopper 13 farthest from the viewer in FIG. 1. The cables 68 described in connection with FIG. 2 are then payed out by the winches 66 until their ends can be secured to the dump truck and the winches 66 are then driven in a direction to tighten up the cables to hold the hopper-conveyor unit tightly against the dump truck. This dump truck is then elevated sufficiently to drop gravel chips into the hopper 13 of the device disclosed here. The operator will close the control gate 70' until he has run the conveyor 18 sufificiently to get a load of gravel chips in the box 21. It will be understood that a tank vehicle has just previously tothis passed along the shoulder to spread a layer of tar or bituminous material. The driver of the dump truck is then signalled to go ahead and the operator of the device of this invention standing on the step 64 will start the conveyor 18 by manipulation of the handle and will start the hydraulic motor 41 by manipulation of lever 63. Gravel chips will then be carried by conveyor 18 and thrown into the box 21 where they will partly spread themselves on the perforated bottom 31 which will be aided by the oscillating motion of the bottom due to the connection with hydraulic motor 41. The control gate will have been set to a predetermined position so as to open a sufiicient number of holes to give the desired deposit of gravel chips on the road shoulder. These chips will be evenly distributed over the entire width of the shoulder due to the fact that the bottom 31 is perforated from end to end and the same number of rows of holes will open or close by the gate 70 through the entire longitudinal dimension of the bottom 31 so that an even coating of gravel chips is deposited on the shoulder across the entire Width thereof, whatever depth of deposit be chosen. When the dump truck is empty, the device is stopped and the cables 68 are disconnected from the dump truck and again connected to another full truck to repeat the operation. The operation and control of this device is very simple and there are few parts to get out of order.

What is claimed is:

1. Apparatus for evenly spreading gravel on the shoulder of a roadway comprising a vehicle adapted to move along the roadway, a hopper on said vehicle in position to receive gravel from a hauling truck, a conveyor on said vehicle extending crosswise of said roadway and ef fective to deliver gravel from said hopper to said shoulder laterally beyond an edge of said roadway, a box having a longitudinal dimension extending crosswise of said shoulder and connected with said vehicle in position to receive gravel discharged from said conveyor, said box having a bottom with overall through perforations, means for reciprocating the bottom of said box, said perforations being arranged in parallel lines extending crosswise of said shoulder, and an imperforate gravel control gate having mounting means supporting said gate for movement close to said bottom generally at right angles to said parallel lines to various positions in which holes of uniformly distributing capacity are opened through the longitudinal dimension of said box, whereby a uniformly distributed coating of gravel is deposited on the shoulder across the entire width thereof.

2. Apparatus as defined in claim 1, wherein said box is supported in cantilever fashion from said vehicle.

3. Apparatus as defined in claim 1, wherein said box is longer crosswise of said shoulder, and said reciprocating means is an oscillator moving said bottom alternately in the direction of said longer dimension sufliciently to maintain even distribution of said gravel on said bottom.

4. Apparatus as defined in claim 3, wherein said box has side walls parallel to said longer dimension, and means suspended from said side walls supporting said box bottom for endwise oscillation.

5. Apparatus as defined in claim 4, wherein said oscillator is a motor mounted on said box, and said motor having a vertically extending driven shaft having an eccentric connection with one end of said box bottom.

6 6. Apparatus as defined in claim 1, wherein said gate 3,017,189 1/1962 Belt 239-676X mounting means comprises ways mounted on said box and 3,037,780 6/ 1962 Skromme et a1 214-519X supporting said gate below said bottom for movement 2,113,784 12/ 1963 Swenson et a1 239-657 across the shorter dimension of said box.

5 M. HENSON WOOD, ]R., Primary Examiner References Cited M. Y. MAR, Assistant Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,685,986 8/1954 Hampton 222 200 2,779,508 1/1957 Ensinger 222178 10 222-4 63, 199, 200, 221; 239-144, 659 2,801,773 8/1957 Vitkin 222200 

